About

Dr. Michael J. Struett is a Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. His research generally focuses on the evolution of norms in world politics, the role of international organizations and international law in contributing to world order, and the impact of non-governmental organizations in global governance. He teaches courses on Global Governance and International Organizations, International Law, the United Nations, and International Relations theory. Dr. Struett has authored and co-edited significant works including 'Maritime Piracy and the Construction of Global Governance' and 'The Politics of Constructing the International Criminal Court,' which analyze the role of NGOs and international institutions in shaping global legal and security frameworks. His scholarly contributions extend to numerous journal articles on topics such as international criminal law, maritime piracy, and the ethics of international organizations. He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine in 2005, after earning his bachelor's degree with honors from UC Berkeley and a master's degree from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. His work emphasizes understanding the interaction of multiple international organizations, the institutionalization of international criminal justice, and the ethical dimensions of international law.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Regional science

Selected publications

• The “Third” United Nations: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think, Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 224 pp., cloth $85, eBook $84.99.

  Ethics & International Affairs · 2022

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  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Regional science

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• Reading and Writing Constructivist Research in American Political Science

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2017-01-01 · 2 citations

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• Navigating the Maritime Piracy Regime Complex

  Global Governance A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations · 2013-08-12 · 72 citations

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  Maritime piracy is one of the oldest subjects of international law and recently it has reemerged as a serious threat to commerce and security. While states have become more engaged in punishing and preventing piracy, efforts as a whole have been poorly organized, ad hoc, mostly unilateral, slow to develop, and only minimally effective. This is true despite the existence of a regime complex that supposedly promotes effective cooperation on the issue. What explains the insufficient response to this rising economic and security threat? This article argues that the regime complex itself is a major part of the problem. It examines specifically four core elemental regimes that are identifiable by their key texts or organizations: the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, the International Maritime Organization, and the International Maritime Bureau. This analysis adopts a perspective that emphasizes how these different...

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• Why the International Criminal Court Must <i>Pretend</i> to Ignore Politics

  Ethics & International Affairs · 2012-01-01 · 16 citations

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  Since the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutes crimes of mass violence that are inherently political in nature, its actions will inevitably have political consequences about which the prosecutor and judges should be as well informed as possible. As some of the other contributors to this roundtable note, the ICC's actions and inactions may even have life-and-death consequences in the real world. It is ethically irresponsible for the ICC's officers to ignore those concerns. At the same time, the court's moral and legal authority derives entirely from its claim that it applies universal rules wherever it has jurisdiction. In order for the International Criminal Court to build legitimacy over time, it must both act and be seen to act in a neutral way that transcends political pressures. Rule-of-law courts do not derive their authority from their ability to command the use of force. Nor do they have the legitimacy of elected political officials who act as the representatives of a political community. The legitimacy of courts is a function of their claim to uphold universal rules of law that the community has chosen to adopt, regardless of whether doing so is popular or even prudent in a particular case with particular constituencies. Consequently, court officers in their formal actions—including prosecutorial requests for investigations, issuing arrest warrants, and filing charges, as well as in the judges' decisions on those questions—should always ground the rationale for their decisions in the pretense that they act only to uphold the law and without regard for political considerations.

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• Lara J. Nettelfield, Courting Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague Tribunal’s Impact in a Postwar State (New York: 2010: Cambridge University Press). A Comment

  Southeastern Europe · 2012-01-01

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  "Lara J. Nettelfield, Courting Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague Tribunal’s Impact in a Postwar State (New York: 2010: Cambridge University Press). A Comment" published on 01 Jan 2012 by Brill | Schöningh.

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• Maritime Piracy and Regime Complexes: Explaining Low Levels of Coordination

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2011-03-16

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• 4 The Politics of Discursive Legitimacy: Understanding the Dynamics and Implications of Prosecutorial Discretion at the International Criminal Court

  2009-05-07 · 4 citations

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  Abstract The authorities of the International Criminal Court are in a position to use their autonomy to develop substantial discursive separation from the pressures of realpolitik. Because the design of the ICC allows its officers considerable independent authority from the pressures of the officials of the state governments that created it, these officers are in a position to argue for the fair imposition of international criminal law standards with less need to bend to the realities of interstate power politics. This chapter proposes that the flexible design of the ICC advances the procedural aspects of legitimacy through the discursive dynamics of prosecutorial authority and discretion. It argues that such discursive legitimacy constitutes a way of understanding the universalizing effects of legalism; and that the permanence of the Court ensures that reasons and arguments (discursive strategies) will be formulated in response to the effects of any negative perception(s) of foreign legalism.

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• War Crimes Trials and the Just War Tradition

  Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks · 2009-01-01

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  The discourses surrounding the development of the just war tradition and the discourse surrounding the development of international criminal law have long influenced one another.1 Walzer reminds us that Grotius and Pufendorf deliberately incorporated just war theory into International law.2 Still, the international criminal law and just war discourses are conceptually and practically very distinct, and few participants in either discourse directly utilize the terms of the other.3 In what follows, I argue that each discourse needs the other. Recent rapid developments in the field of international criminal law have the potential to remake the just war tradition by institutionalizing criminal accountability for the most egregious violators of just war norms. That is only possible, however, to the extent that international criminal law tends to codify norms that reflect the moral principles of the just war tradition.

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• Ethics and Agency in International Organizations

  International Studies Review · 2009-12-01

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  Religious views, ethical frameworks, and normative considerations certainly impact outcomes in world politics. Still, social scientists have tended to shy away from systematic examination of the question of the role of ethics in shaping political behavior. The same cannot be said of each of the three volumes under consideration here. All these books seek to analyze the relationship between ethics and the political processes of global governance. Kent Kille's edited volume, The UN Secretary General and Moral Authority, and Manuel Fröhlich's book, Political Ethics and the United Nations, both focus on the ways that personal ethics impact leadership from the office of the UN Secretary-General, and the latter book focuses more specifically on the ethics and political life of Dag Hammarskjöld. The third volume, Global Accountabilities edited by Alnoor Ebrahim and Edward Weisband, takes a broader view of ethics and accountability in global governance processes and argues that such ethical accountability cannot be grounded solely in rationalist prescriptions for principal–agent relationships.

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• The Politics of Constructing the International Criminal Court

  Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks · 2008-01-01 · 201 citations

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  This book examines the political process that led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002. It accounts for the main features of the court, including its strong, independent pr

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Frequent coauthors

• Mark T. Nance

  3 shared

• Diane Armstrong

  2 shared

• Jon D. Carlson

  1 shared

Labs

• Research and EngagementPI

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  University of California Irvine

  2005

• MA of International Affairs

  George Washington University

  1998